Join our team on October 4th and 5th at Princeton Theological Seminary for the Confirmation Conference where we will be sharing the findings of the Confirmation Project and strategizing with ministry leaders about practical steps in cultivating teen faith through confirmation and equivalent ministries. You can learn more about the conference and register here!
Author Archive | Bryan Miller
AME History and New Portrait
In our project, we have had the pleasure of working with a number of African Methodist Episcopal churches. Their methods of discipleship and confirmation equivalent practices have been varied throughout history and are especially so in the contemporary church. These churches have significantly enriched our research, particularly in ways that extend the concept of confirmation […]
Greetings from our research team!
We gathered at the end of February to comb through our findings and we are beginning to see some exciting trends emerge. The good news is that there are some strong, creative, traditional, innovative, and plenty of “non-conforming” confirmation ministries from which all of us can learn. The congregations in our study are facing many […]
250 Ministry Professionals Attend Confirmation Project Workshops
The key findings from The Confirmation Project are finally taking shape! Ministry professionals in three different locations spread across the country were among the first to hear the newest information from the project. Terri Elton and Jacob Sorenson presented to a group of 100 ELCA youth ministry professionals at the Youth Ministry Extravaganza in Louisville, […]
Presentations from “Confirmation: Contemporary Research and Innovative Practices”
In the fall of 2016 Princeton Theological Seminary held a course called “Confirmation: Contemporary Research and Innovative Practices.” This course invited students to engage research findings from The Confirmation Project and consider the implications for confirmation ministry in congregations. During this course we invited four guest speakers to speak about specific dimensions of this research. […]
Digging into the Data
The last few months have been exciting times for the Confirmation Project! We are now at the point of our research where we are starting to really dig into the data that we have been collecting through the last couple of years. While an extremely exciting time, it is also a daunting task. We have survey […]
River of Hope Lutheran Church Portrait
This week we are sharing a new portrait of a unique confirmation situation. River of Hope Lutheran Church is a mission start, but the congregation members are long-term ELCA members, which is quite different than many mission start churches. They are grounded in their understanding of Lutheran theology, but decided to start a new church in a […]
New Portraits from Two Innovative Confirmation Programs
This week we are sharing two new portraits of unique confirmation situations. One portrait is of a Presbyterian church using a flipped classroom methodology to engage youth in an overcommitted world. The other portrait features a confirmation class from a multi-cultural Episcopal church that participates in a General Confirmation Service put on by the Diocese of California […]
The Miracle of Confirmation Sunday
Are you frustrated by Confirmation Sunday? Do you find yourself worrying about whether your students are genuine when they confess their faith? Paul Koch’s article “The Miracle of Confirmation Sunday” in The Cresset offers a hope-filled perspective about these common worries. You can read the article at The Cresset’s website, here.
Confirmation Portraits from Lake Tahoe and North Las Vegas
This week we are sharing two new portraits, one is a collaboration between two United Methodist pastors and the other is a program that integrates a confirmation equivalent practice into an AME context. Two United Methodist Church pastors in California were frustrated with attendance and retention problems in their confirmation ministry programs, so they turned to […]